Crowdsourcing is a tool where a community of people offer their ideas or services, providing creativity and reducing the company’s members’ workload. It can be used by any company when a need arises, from the design of an app, logos or advertising campaigns to new products or new market strategies. All you have to do is contact this platform, open a call and start receiving applications from the most qualified people for the project. Do you want to know more about crowdsourcing? Here we explain everything you need to know about this useful tool becoming more and more popular.
Table of Contents
What is Crowdsourcing?
Its etymology comes from the English language and is divided into two terms: crowd, which means gathering, and outsourcing which means outsourcing of resources. Therefore, crowdsourcing refers to the collaboration of the public on outsourced resources. Human resources (intellectual, creative, artistic, among others) do not come from any entity or corporation but the community.
In his article, this term was coined by Jeff Howe The emergence of crowdsourcing in Wired magazine in 2006. Howe explained that crowdsourcing allows access to people with knowledge of a particular topic through an open call to solve certain problems. In this way, diversity and complementarity can remain achieved as a kind of collaborative work carried out by many people who contribute ideas for the development of a certain project.
What is Crowdsourcing for when to Resort to it?
Crowdsourcing has become one of the tools of collaboration more dynamic for companies for their organizational system. It can remain used for various purposes depending on the project. Through this, you can directly count on the contributions and opinions of target audiences and potential clients. You can also conduct surveys, voting, brainstorm, design new products or gifts of ideas in strategic planning.
This Tool can be used to:
Approach customers through the use of surveys. They remain asked what they think about certain products or what other products they would like the company to create—for example, surveys through social networks or a mailing system.
To solve a problem through collaboration or competition through the open call to a specific community. In this way, better solutions can remain obtained in less time and effort.
When you want to innovate in the company through fresh and creative ideas, an entire group’s capacity has more scope than that of a person.
Types of Crowdsourcing
You already know what crowdsourcing is and what it is for. Now, you should know that it has different classifications according to the objectives you want to achieve. Which crowdsourcing is more convenient? We tell you which one could be adjusted to your project or undertaking.
Crowdcreation or Collective Creation
This type of crowdsourcing consists of the collaboration of the community for creative proposals. Of the ideas received, those that bring innovation to the product remain taken into account. It stay not required to remain a specialist in the subject, to be a user of a certain product or service.
Example
LEGO’s company invites its customers to share ideas about its products with the user community. The objective of this call is that these ideas receive comments. If the proposal reaches 10,000 followers or more, the company evaluates it. If the product is feasible, LEGO’s executes it and offers the user 1% of royalties from the sales generated in return for the proposal.
Crowdfunding or Collective Financing
Crowdfunding is the funding, by the community, for a project or cause. It supports artistic projects, such as concerts or the production of films, technological projects such as the development of applications, to social causes, such as donations to foundations.
Example
The film The Cosmonaut is one of the best-known crowdfunding projects in Spain since its realization was possible thanks to the small contributions of 5,000 people.
Crowd Voting or Collective Voting
This type of crowdsourcing consists of mass voting, often used in idea competitions or large surveys. Running it requires the community to categorize and filter content. It can stay used to evaluate any product.
Example
A good example of crowd voting remain the Adidas Crowdsourced Fashion Show. The event, which was featured on the Adidas runway during New York Fashion Week, was designed remain users via Twitter. Through this social network, the community that wanted to participate voted for the lighting and music, among other details that were part of the catwalk.
Crowd Wisdom or Collective Wisdom:
Crowd wisdom consists of making use and harnessing the knowledge of the community to obtain intelligent results. To do this, they stay consulted on a specific topic in which they have experience.
Example
Open Xerox is a company that produces technology prototypes. Before launching the final product on the market, they offer it to the user community for comments and suggestions, which they believe apply to daily life. These remain analyzed in case they have to make adjustments or make smart decisions.